Card Range To Study

8 Cards in this Set

Front

Back

Altair 8800

One of the first microcomputers without an operating system. Programs needed to be entered by "fat-fingering" in order to use it. Was tedious and inaccurate.

BIOS

Basic output/input system - a collection of programs that has the capibility of communicating with peripheral devices like keyboards. Loads the operating system into RAM and turn control of the computer over to it (RAM=nonpermanent memory).

Booting up
--rebooting
--cold rebooting
--warm rebooting

The process of automaatically running a program located in ROM, which in turn loads the operating system into RAM and leaves the operating system in control.

Graphical User Interface

Commands are usually given through a mouse. More user-friendly.

Command-line Interface

Communication occurs by the use of commands.

Open-source software

The program has copies of the original source code avaliable so that changes can be made. Linux is free adn the original program is avaliable, meaning that anyone can make changes to suit their computing needs.

Flatfile structure

Filing system that organizes files in one list, usually in date or alphabetical order. Not subvidived in any way, and access to the list must be obtained by looking at the complete list.